SmartServer 101
- Nina Cardillo
SmartServer IoT is the industry’s first truly open, end-to-end, and extensible, multi-protocol IoT edge server that accelerates your system integration projects for industrial IoT applications. It is ideal for monitor and control, energy management and data analytics applications in smart buildings, cities, and factories and allows you to interface to those devices with local workstations and remote cloud services. The SmartServer IoT hardware is shown in the figure below. See the SmartServer IoT product page or download the datasheet for a list of features and more information.
SmartServer IoT and EnOcean SmartConnect (described below) include the SmartServer Platform software. The SmartServer Platform (SmartServer) has built-in support for BACnet, Modbus, LonWorks (LON), EnOcean, and LoRaWAN devices and can be customized for new protocols. It has a built-in web server, which can be used to access devices and to read/write to device datapoints. You can use the built-in Central Management System (CMS) web pages, or you can create custom web pages, to interact with devices. The CMS is shown in the figure below. SmartServer Manager provides a management interface for a single SmartServer; EnOcean SmartSupervisor provides a supervision and management interface for multiple SmartServers. See SmartServer Manager vs. SmartSupervisor for more information.
Supported SmartServer hardware configurations include the following:
SmartServer IoT – the SmartServer Platform and SmartServer Manager reside in the SmartServer IoT hardware. The SmartServer IoT also includes SmartServer IoT software that is adapted for the SmartServer IoT hardware. The following models are available:
SmartServer IoT Pro (IoT platform with USB expansion)
SmartServer IoT Pro EX (IoT platform with USB and RS-485 expansion)
EnOcean SmartConnect – the containerized SmartServer Platform and SmartServer Manager reside on custom hardware. SmartConnect can be installed on the Raspberry Pi 4 or CM4, and is supported with SmartServer 4.2 and higher. For SmartConnect 4.3 and higher, LON PL is not supported; for SmartConnect 4.2, LON is not supported. See SmartConnect Getting Started for more information.
EnOcean SmartSupervisor – the SmartServer Platform resides on the SmartServer IoT hardware or SmartConnect custom hardware. The CMS resides on a local or cloud server that can be used to control multiple SmartServer IoTs and SmartConnects. Communications between the CMS and SmartServer is performed using MQTT. SmartSupervisor requires SmartServer 4.4 and higher. See SmartSupervisor Getting Started.
The SmartServer can be used as a router and supports multi-port routing. With the built-in Node-RED editor, you can create web and data flows. You can also create internal devices or apps (e.g., using node.js), which allow you to customize the SmartServer to your needs. Furthermore, you can make connections between datapoints on devices of the same protocol, or between devices on different protocols. The SmartServer has a built-in data logger, alarm generator, and scheduling capability.
The SmartServer can be accessed through REST, WebSocket, and MQTT APIs. Device data can be pushed to the cloud by using one of the APIs, or by using an existing or creating a new Node-RED cloud connector flow. Many cloud providers (e.g., AWS and Google) provide Node-RED cloud connector flows that you can import into the SmartServer to access their cloud services. See SmartServer IoT Node-RED Tutorial for more information.
The SmartServer can also be used with an IzoT CT network or an IzoT Net Server database to allow you to monitor and control external LON devices and internal LON devices. Device datapoints for other protocols can be access using internal LON devices. Support for LonWorks channels (FT-10, TP-1250 or power line) requires that you purchase a U60 or U70 network interface for each LonWorks channel that you want to support (U60/U70 limits) in addition to the SmartServer IoT. See the U60 datasheet and U70 datasheet for more information.
Depending on your application, device capacity and maintenance licenses may be required for SmartServer 3.3 and higher. See Manage Licenses for more information. Devices can be manually added to the SmartServer, or you can use the SmartServer device discovery feature to discover devices. See Discovering, Defining, or Importing Devices for more information.
This section introduces SmartServer key concepts and architecture, and the organization of this documentation. See also the System Architecture diagram for more details. The following topics are included in this section: